Call for expressions of interest: participation in the ECB Pontes market contact group

15 July 2025

The Eurosystem invites financial market stakeholders to express their formal interest in participating in the Pontes market contact group. This group will support and facilitate an active dialogue with the market regarding the Pontes project to enable distributed ledger technology (DLT) transactions to be settled in euro using central bank money.

Building on the successful results of the exploratory work on new technologies for wholesale central bank money settlement, the Eurosystem will provide a solution to the market for settling wholesale financial transactions in euro on market DLT platforms against central bank money – the Pontes project. This call for expression of interest invites financial market stakeholders to express their formal interest in contributing to the Pontes project and its pilot phase.

The Pontes market contact group is expected to advise the Eurosystem on activities related to the project delivery (e.g. user requirements, testing activities and client readiness). The group will be composed of market stakeholders, national central banks and other relevant actors and will report to the ECB Market Infrastructure Board in accordance with its mandate (see annex 1).

Financial market stakeholders interested in joining this group are invited to complete the application form (see annex 2) and submit it to the ECB at Pontes@ecb.europa.eu by 29 August 2025. The Pontes market contact group plans to commence work in October 2025.

Following the decision of the ECB’s Governing Council to proceed with the implementation of a Eurosystem DLT-based solution to settle transactions recorded on DLT using central bank money, the Eurosystem will follow a two-track approach: the first track “Pontes” provides a short-term offering to the market – including a pilot phase – and the second track “Appia” focuses on a potential long-term solution. For more information on this initiative, please see our Focus Session held on Tuesday, 15 July 2025.